Messaging systems are in widespread use. Messaging systems can be single or multi-media and real time or non-real time.
Electronic voice mail systems, the oldest messaging system, allow a user to receive, edit, and forward voice messages. Each subscriber normally has his or her own mailbox for receiving voice messages. The voice message is typically digitized and stored in the mailbox until deleted by the subscriber. After digitization, the voice message can be handled as a paper message. It can be copied, stored, sent to one or many people, with or without comment.
Electronic text mail or Email systems are the next oldest messaging system. It is a store-and-forward service for transmitting textual messages transmitted in machine readable form from a communication device, such as a computer terminal or computer system. As in the case of voice mail, the email is stored in the recipient's mailbox until for access by the user. In Email systems, each subscriber may be provided with a directory or listing of stored emails. A directory includes a representation of each email and a pointer to the stored email itself. The representation can include descriptive information, such as whether or not the email has been read, a level of urgency of the email, a description of the email contents, the email sender, and a timestamp associated with the email. In addressing email, an autocomplete function can provide, within a few characters of typing the addressee entry, a list of frequently emailed contacts that may include the desired addressee. For example, when typing an email to “Lenard, Rohan”, the user need only type in “L-E-N” prior to a match being displayed. The user can then select the match, and the remaining part of the addressee entry will be completed automatically.
Unlike voice mail and Email systems, which are not considered to be real-time communication channels, instant messaging is effectively real time text messaging. When a user logs into his computer, he is informed which of his “buddies” are on line. The user can type a text message and hit “send”. The recipient sees the instant message immediately. Instant messaging is essentially real-time, on-line electronic mail.
An ongoing problem with messaging systems is complexity and efficiency. If a sender wishes to send a group of recipients a message, he has several choices. First, he can laboriously enter each recipient's address separately. This method requires the user to remember the address of each recipient, which can be a problem for large numbers of recipients. Although the autocomplete function exists in most messaging applications, such as Microsoft Outlook™, these options still require the sender to remember at least part of the name and/or address of each recipient and do not obviate the need to enter each address addressee-by-addressee. Second, he can create a distribution list including the addresses of the selected recipients and simply reference it by group name. The problem with this method is the time and effort required to create the distribution list. Finally, when the message to be sent can be configured as a reply to the sender and other recipients of a prior message he can hit “reply all” and the message will automatically be sent to each of the other parties. This often requires the sender to locate a message listing all of the recipients in addressee fields, which can take time.